Rate the Unit 3: Clanne

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Guidelines:

2.1.) mention the diffculty on which you rate the unit 

2.2.) what classes your unit went through, what skills they had and so on; don´t consider obviously suboptimal builds.

2.3.) no DLC rings, no non-unit DLC bonuses

2.4.) no grinding in skirmishes

2.5.) no rng abuse (no resetting for bond rings)

2.6.) cooking is allowed

2.7.) ratings to be given in the format X/10

2.8.) if it isn´t mentioned above, it´s fair game

2.9.) no "Kagetsu exists and obsoletes Lapis, 0/10", explain your rating

 

 

Unit: Clanne   Join-Chapter: 2 Class: Mage       Lvl HP STR MAG DEX SPD LCK DEF RES BLD Bases 1 19 1 8 11 9 4 4 7 8 T. Bases 1 1 0 1 5 3 2 3 0 0 Growths / 40% 35% 10% 40% 50% 20% 30% 25% 5%   Personal Skill: If unit is adjacent to the Divine Dragon, grants Hit+10 during combat to both of them                                                 Innate Proficiency: Tome             SP: 300                                           Support Bonus:                                          Crit Focused

Tools and mo stats:

Engage Numbers - Google Tabellen

Average Stats - Fire Emblem: Engage (FE17) (triangleattack.com)

 

Rating: 5

Next unit on Monday

 

 

(Support Bonuses proper will be back once I unfuck the formatting)

Edited June 19, 2023 by Imuabicus der Fertige

[Etrurian emperor]

7,5/10: Not the heaviest hitter or most useful member of the team but always consistently reliable. 

I've always been a bit confused by the insistence that Clanne is this super bad unit or rendered obsolete by the other mages. I didn't grind and baby Clanne, I didn't do wacky experiments with him and didn't send him out with the best gear out there. I just trained Clanne like any other unit and followed his ''canon'' classline of mage to mageknight/sage. And by just doing that on hard mode I got a decent mage out of him. A mage who noticeable lacked the struggles in dodging and doubling found in other early game mages like Celine and Citrine. 

The whole ''lol he's got a 10 magic growth'' is indeed a very funny trait for a mage, but in practice it doesn't seem to do much to hinder Clanne's performance. 

[SnowFire]

Clanne 20/20 stats with default Mage Knight (Swords) promotion:

38 HP, 19 Str, 21 Mag, 29 Dex, 32 Spd, 19 Def, 27 Res, 14 Lck, 8 Bld, 6 Move
The Build score is bad enough that endgame weapons like Bolganone & Silver Swords will weigh him down 2-4 points, though.  (But Mage Knight's Chaos Style will win him back that Speed sometimes.)  Atrocious HP & Luck, too.  (Tied for 2nd worst HP with Veyle, ahead of only Hortensia?  Ick.)

--

Clanne's an odd duck.  The developers apparently liked putting kids in the "mixed offense characters by dint of growths & class not matching up", as Clanne is reverse Anna - he's got physical growths in a mage-y class, while Anna has mage-y growths in a physical class.  Also, Clanne's Speed is good, a wise stat choice that can save most units from true irrelevance (sorry Lyre). 

I'll discuss mixed offense Clanne first, where he promotes to Mage Knight.  The problem is just that Clanne's Str & Mag aren't very good, so he has trouble actually dealing damage.  This is a big problem, Engage enemies have some bulky Def / Res values!  The speed does a lot to salvage this by getting Clanne lots of doubles at least, but...  it's definitely a problem.  He'd kinda like Eirika to help punch through enemy defenses (Magic boost, Def/Res cutting) but that's a heavily contested Emblem.  He can take Celica at least, when she's around, for a Str/Mag boost?  I'm still not that impressed.  Clanne is usable for sure as a skirmisher who softens enemies up with great Mage Knight movement, but that may be a side effect of Mage Knight just being a good class.  Sometimes you just want to kill stuff, and that's exactly where Clanne isn't great.

Pure Mage Clanne doesn't make a lot of sense to me, where he's given staff proficiency by Micaiah and becomes a Sage.  One of the big thing about Sages is using staves, but staves waste Clanne's good Spd and check his suspect Magic.  Clanne will be substantially worse at that than, say, Citrinne, or even really most random units with a Mag score.  Even if you plan on mostly magical offense, stick to Mage Knight IMO.

The final option is physical Clanne.  He actually makes a pretty scary threat if moved over to this!  Problem is, this requires special treatment & favoritism, and someone like Kagetsu or Rosemary works great out of the box with no need for shenanigans.  Basically, don't feed him XP in Mage beyond Level 2 or so, wait for the first second seal, then SS him over to a physical class.  If you have some safe way to catch up his XP (e.g. Micaiah Great Sacrifice & staff spam or the like), then he can be a speedy bruiser who really hurts, if a tad frail.  This is an interesting novelty, but you get enough acceptable fighters anyway that it's more something done for variety's sake than because it's a key power strategy.

In general, gonna go with 4/10.  Good speed saves him from being outright bad, but I'm really not inspired to deploy him and he's very benchable.  Directly competes with Celine and maybe Anna and Jean on mixed offense builds, so you have no shortage of options already.  

--

Welcome to the DLC zone!  I'm not taking this into account in the score above, but for what it's worth, the DLC includes Emblem Chrom & Robin, who are seemingly designed for mixed builds, perhaps realizing they were a tad underpowered.  If you have access to that Emblem Ring, they'll make a Clanne / Celine / Anna type mixed build much more viable with a huge buffs to both Str & Mag so that the unit can actually kill stuff.

Edited June 15, 2023 by SnowFire

[Dark Holy Elf]

My experience with Clanne is putting a lot of effort into him to get him exp (he was actually the MVP of several earlygame maps for me on my first run), only to get someone who is a lateral shift from Celine and Citrinne at best. The speed is certainly nice, but at least on Maddening he's going to have pretty serious issues one-rounding things anyway. The ancient well has improved him, though, since he can now use Sword Power + Levin Sword, and as a bonus he can do good damage with physical swords too, unlike other mages trying to mimic him. Works in Mage Knight or Griffin Knight, according to taste... Mage Knight is probably better for him since his magic is so low he needs all the help he can get there.

It does feel like almost anything he can do, Chloe can do better; she's got a generally similar-but-better stat build and starts in a great class instead of a suspect one (not to antihype Mage generally, but a Mage with 1+10% true magic is not great). And unfortunately the resources needed for Clanne to really shine are quite contested.

Another difficult unit to rate but I think seconding 4/10 seems fair.

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, SnowFire said:

Also, Clanne's Speed is good, a wise stat choice that can save most units from true irrelevance (sorry Lyre). 

iono... I've had my fair share of frustrations with speed specialists not being able to kill anything quickly even when invested in. Not in this game, but others. Especially Fates; everyone and their grandpa insists Niles is "one of the best units in Conquest" and "a must use", but my only reaction is "...Huh?" when I see his performance (or rather, lack thereof) in battle. Doesn't help that every time I've tried to give him a chance, he was utter dog statistically.

Anyway, I don't really have anything to say here... at least not yet.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[Barren]

Clanne is definitely an interesting unit but maybe not for all the right reasons. I know Mekkah did a discussion video about is Clanne really that bad. It’s available on YouTube for those who want to check it out.

 

But not taking that into account, obviously that personal 10% magic growth is quite glaring. His bases are okay for a level 1 unit but his speed growth is pretty good. This sort of allows him to at least later on not get doubled by enemies in the early stages of maddening, even during the Broadia arc.

 

Verdant Faith allows himself and Alear when they are adjacent Hit +10. While the extra accuracy is appreciated and can be nice later on. Alear in general doesn’t suffer from accuracy issues and tomes are also rather accurate themselves.
 

His strength growth for a mage is pretty good which could encourage the player to switch to a physical class like Hero, or if like to at least put his decent mage base stat to use a Griffon Knight.

 

Mage Knight is where he seems to be the most effective because of his good speed and if paired with the Lyn Ring, can take advantage of Speedtaker, Chaod Style, and maybe even Alacrity along with speed + X. Of course in doing that you’ll just be doubling down on his speed and not doing a lot of damage because of his low magic growth. Some would just give him Celica early on to fix his magic and then maybe later on Corrin which still boosts magic as well as accuracy with the Levin Sword thanks to Sword Focus. Draconic Hex with Thoron on Clanne is also enticing while remaining in Mage Knight.

 

As others have noted he faces competition from Chloe who joins in chapter 4 and can do the same thing but better or if want want more dedicated magical bombs, go with Cittrine or Ivy. It’s not that he’s terrible at playing the mixed attacking/magical role, it’s just that there are better options later. Though for some people, if build is an issue for Clanne when wielding something like Levin Sword, or Bolganone, there is Build + X you can inherit so he would be weighed down less.

Engravings on certain tomes can also be effective. Like putting a Roy engraving on a forged Thunder tome for added might. You’re never doubling with it anyways so you might as well get the most out of that 3 range poke.

 

While I am not going to factor this in my rating, if you’re lucky enough to roll for a S rank Olwen ring by the beginning of chapter 9 where you get Leif, Dire Thunder becomes a really potent brave weapon for you in the early game and with high enough magic you can effectively ORKO enemies with low res. Citrrine is a prime candidate for that set up. But more on her later.

 

I’d say he’s a 5/10 for me personally. He’s usable of course with high investment but ultimately you’ll want someone else to be a magical bomb or even a stronger mixed attacker.

 

Also @Shadow Mir were you trying him out on hard or maddening? And at what point did you decide for yourself that he wasn’t worth the investment? Just asking out of curiosity.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Barren
More info

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, Barren said:

Also @Shadow Mir were you trying him out on hard or maddening? And at what point did you decide for yourself that he wasn’t worth the investment? Just asking out of curiosity.

After seeing him fail to pull his weight in multiple runs, honestly. It's hard for me to believe he's gonna be an asset in Lunatic if he cannot last on frigging Hard... Doesn't help that capture is utter dog in Fates. In more ways than one. As a result, I've come to think Nina (among others) is better because she can actually hurt things.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[lenticular]

My experience of Clanne is that I'm always looking forward to dropping him. In truth, though, a lot of that has nothing to do with his performance as a unit. My enthusiasm to get rid of him is more to do with his character; the avatar worship from him and his sister (can I get away with calling them the Fawn Brigade? probably not) instantly rubbed me the wrong way. So it's possible that I've never given him a fair shake. But with that said, due to his early recruitment, I have used him a little in both my playthroughs, and he never really gave me any reason to want to stick with him or delay benching him. His early game performance isn't particularly distinguished, and other units quickly come along that can do everything that he can and then some. My initial instinct is to give him a 3/10 but I think that part of that is down to my personal bias against him. I don't doubt the people who say he's turned out decently for them, so that's enough for me to nudge my rating up to a 4/10.

[LJ_Reflet]

I'll be the devil's advocate here, as Clanne was undoubtedly one of my best and most reliable units (hard/classic). I will be talking about personal experience for the most part, as I know my experience with Clanne is obviously very different from other's.

On paper, his base 10% magic growth is absolutely terrible for a unit who's presented as a magic unit, and his base 35% strength growth (which is high for this game's standards) makes you question why they decided to put him in a magic class at base. However, with the Mage class' additional magic growth, his magic and strength growth are equal. Putting this aside though, his base in magic and speed are fairly high so his early game is quite strong.

On the other hand, his speed is his big selling point, alongside a fairly good growth in dex and a decent but below average growth in defense. He has the highest base speed of early game units until Chloe comes in and his 50% growth (2nd highest in the game) means he'll be sure to maintain his speed lead among others. Citrinne will always have higher magical damage output compared to Clanne, but she will typically be slower than him.

Regardless of which, Clanne's strong early game is what carries his performance (for me at least). If you're willing to give Celica to Clanne instead of Celine when she comes in, it definitely bumps up his performance.

Promotion choice is easy, as he has natural access to Mage Knight with his boon in Swords and that also allows him to utilize his strength stat with access to swords. Reclassing to Griffin Knight would also be a good choice for him, since his statline is probably much more suited for the class--if his magic does fall behind and his strength somehow manages to grow that much.

Clanne's biggest problem is what others have mentioned before, and that it's competition in his archetype. Celine and Citrinne come in fairly early game, but IMO, it kinda boils down to personal preference on these characters as I feel like Clanne can perform just as well as these units.

My personal experience with him was overall heavily, heavily positive. He was one of my most reliable units, being able to one-round most enemies (his performance was not too far off from Pandreo's). I don't know what it was, maybe I just got lucky, maybe I showed him favoritism. I have no idea. I used him as I would any other unit, but I would be lying through my teeth if I said he was a bad unit in my playthrough.

Overall, I give Clanne a 8/10. This high score is mainly due to my overall positive personal experience with him. I would give him a 9 or 10 out of 10, but I don't wanna anger too much of this community cause I know others would heavily disagree with me LOL.